To the Permanent Justice of the High Court of The South Pacific,

The following Legal Question is submitted, challenging the legality of the Cabinet's actions on 21 January 2015, which are: unilaterally creating a new forum and redirecting the domain (thesouthpacific.org) to these new forums; unilaterally removing Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as forum administrators; unilaterally installing Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as forum administrators; unilaterally removing Kringalia's citizenship and his membership in the Committee on State Security; and unilaterally removing Regional Officer Border Control powers from Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, Kringalia, and Farengeto.

Part 1: Unilaterally creating a new forum and redirecting the domain to those new forums

In contradiction of Articles 9.1 and 9.2, Hileville and the Cabinet created a new forum on 10 January 2015. (As evidenced by the creation date for the “Lampshade” root account.) These forums are located at the following URL: http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/ (hereafter “the Zetaboards domain” or “the Zetaboards forum”). They did so in direct violation of Article 9.3 of the Charter, usurping the Assembly's exclusive right over establishing new forums.

Part 1(a): Article 9.1 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states:

“1. The Coalition's official Regional Forum is located at http://thesouthpacific.org.” (Herein after “the forums.”)

Hileville, owner the thesouthpacific.org domain, set up a URL redirect to the Zetaboards domain. When typing in “thesouthpacific.org” in their browser, the user is redirected to the Zetaboards domain. As such, in a purely legalistic argument, the forums created by Hileville and the Cabinet are not “located at” http://thesouthpacific.org. The are “located at” http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/. Therefore, the forums at the Zetaboards domain are not the Coalition's official Regional Forum under the Charter.

Part 1(b): Article 9.2 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states:

“2. Should the Regional Forum cease to exist or otherwise become permanently unavailable then the Cabinet is authorized to establish a replacement Regional Forum.”

Hileville and the Cabinet make no argument in their statement that the forums had ceased to exist or had become permanently unavailable. Their arguments for taking those drastic actions were grievances against members of the Administration Team. Nowhere in the Charter is that a valid reason to establish new forums. Therefore, the Cabinet was not “authorized to establish a replacement Regional Forum.”

Part 1(c ): Article 9.3 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states:

“3. Barring circumstances outlined in Section 2 the Assembly reserves the sole right to authorize the creation of a new Regional Forum.”

The Assembly did not debate, and certainly did not vote, on Hileville and the Cabinet's forum move. Because the forums had not ceased to exist and did not become permanently unavailable, the only legal means for the creation of a new forum is through an Assembly vote on a Charter amendment. No such vote occurred.

The Assembly's sole right to establish new forums is further evidenced by the move to the DigitalOcean server, approved on 8 December 2015 (http://104.131.34.7/thread-3474.html). The Admins had been discussing a forum move with the Assembly since February 2015. It took a full year through the political process to conduct a nondisruptive forum move. It flies in the face of reason that Hileville and the Cabinet argue they are authorized to move to new forums in an instant, without Assembly consultation, without a debate, and without a vote, and in a highly disruptive manner that leaves nearly two years of threads, posts, logs, Assembly votes, election results, roleplays, games, diplomatic events, and archives effectively inaccessible.

Furthermore, the above resolution (which is a binding legal document) specifies that the Official Regional Forum will be located on a server owned by Tsunamy and maintained by Sandaoguo. Neither of these conditions exist for the Zetaboards forum.

Question: Given the above, did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly violate Articles 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 of the Charter?

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Part 2: Unilaterally removing Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as admins, and installing Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as admins.

Without any granted authority under the Charter to do so, Hileville and the Cabinet removed the entire Administration Team and installed the above three Cabinet members as administrators of the Zetaboards forums. They did without any consultation with the Assembly, the High Court, the Committee on State Security, or the sitting Administration Team.

Article 9 of the Charter, which governs the Administration Team, contains no provision for Cabinet authority to remove or install members of the Administration Team. Such rules are governed by the Administrative Procedures, as specified in Article 9.5. The Administrative Procedures (http://104.131.34.7/thread-567-post-30458.html#pid30458) set forth an application process for new Administrators and Moderators.

The Administration Team had not announced open applications for new administrators. Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla never submitted applications to become administrators. They were never chosen to become administrators. Under no law of the Coalition are they authorized to be administrators of the official Regional Forum.

Question: Given the above, did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly act without legal authorization to remove Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as administrators, and did they act without any legal authorization and against Administrative Procedures to install Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as administrators?

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Part 3: Unilaterally removing Kringalia from the Committee on State Security

Without any legal authority under the Charter, Hileville and the Cabinet removed Kringalia from the Committee on State Security (CSS). They did so by illegally removing his citizenship and claiming he could not sit on the CSS as a result.

Part 3(a): Illegally removing Kringalia's citizenship

On 30 December 2015, Imkihca send a Private Message to Sandaoguo with a list of players who no longer qualified for citizenship, either because they ceased to exist in TSP, or they did not meet the activity requirements of 2 posts within a 30 day period. Kringalia was included on this list, with Imkihca noting that his last 2 posts were made on 22 November 2015.

On 4 January 2016, following the move to the DigitalOcean server, Sandaoguo conducted the demasking of the list, save Kringalia. The reason given was that Kringalia had actually made posts in the private administration forum, which Imkihca could not see. For the record, those posts were made on 3:52pm (Eastern) on 1 December 2015 and 10:29am (Eastern) on 2 December 2015. In other words, Kringalia had made 2 posts within the 30 day period since Imkihca sent the demask list. Proof can be supplied to the Permanent Justice upon request.

Hileville and the Cabinet contend that those posts do not count, because they were made in a private area of the forum that Imkihca could not see. There is no legal basis for this argument. There are several areas of the forum that the Vice Delegate cannot see, including Ministry forums, Cabinet forums, and confidential military forums. When citizens make posts in those forums, they count. They have always counted. In response to Sandaoguo, Imkihca even agreed that she had “no problem including posts in private sections of the forums.” (Proof of all Private Message content can be supplied to the Permanent Justice upon request.)

There was a legitimate issue with the Vice Delegate being responsible for conducting activity checks, but not being able to see all posts in all areas of the forum. As with many thing in The South Pacific, a hodge-podge series of amendments to laws and inadequate planning led to a hole in the process. Seeking to be helpful, Sandaoguo created a tool to alleviate this issue, which showed the dates of the last two posts made by all citizens regardless of where they were made, without needing to grant the Vice Delegate permissions to access those areas. Imkihca was sent the URL to this tool, which is publicly available at http://104.131.34.7/pages.php?page=citizens-list, on 12 January 2015. This was slightly over one week after the issue was brought to the Administration Team's attention.

In fact, between the time this issue arose and the time Hileville created the Zetaboards forum on 10 January 2015, only 6 days had passed. The Cabinet did not bother to have an actual discussion with the Administration Team over the issue, and used it as a pillar in their statement even though the Citizen Roster was created specifically to fix the issue.

If Hileville and the Cabinet continued to have a grievance over Kringalia's citizenship status, they did not express that to any administrator after 4 January 2015. Imkihca did not continue the Private Message thread with Sandaoguo after he provided her the explanation and justification. The Cabinet did not issue a formal complaint. They did not raise the issue with Tsunamy or Kringalia. How can the Administration Team remedy an issue without communication?

Furthermore, if the Cabinet and the Administration Team could not reach an agreement, even though no attempt had been made, the appropriate venue to turn to would be the High Court. Disagreements over the meaning and application of the laws are settled in our judiciary. Instead, they created the Zetaboards forum, sat on those forums for 11 days, and during that time did not attempt whatsoever to pursue any legal means of addressing their grievances.

Part 3(b): Illegally removing Kringalia from the Committee on State Security

There are three means under the law by which a member of the CSS may lose their membership:

1. Resigning.
2. Losing citizenship.
3. A successful recall under Article 2 of the Code of Laws.

Kringalia did not resign. Pursuant to Part 3(a), he remains a citizen. As such, and until one of the above three events happen, Kringalia is a member of the CSS.

Hileville and the Cabinet cannot point to any legal means for the Cabinet to unilaterally remove any member of the CSS.

Question: Did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly act without any legal authorization to remove Kringalia's citizenship and remove him from the Committee on State Security?

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Part 4: Unilaterally removing Regional Officer Border Control powers from Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, Kringalia, and Farengeto

“Border Control” is a Regional Officer power granting a player the ability to eject or ban nations from the region. The issuance of Border Control power is determined by the Regional Officers Act (http://104.131.34.7/thread-3441.html). All members of the Committee on State Security must be granted Border Control power, per Article 1.2 of that act. This is a serious security measure, as being able to eject and ban nations from the region allows members of the Committee on State Security to respond to invasion and coups d'etat. Without it, the CSS is effectively powerless.

Article 4.3 of the act allows a majority of the Cabinet to suspend Regional Officers powers for “behavior unbecoming of a regional representative of The South Pacific.” In their statement, Hileville and the Cabinet do not content that those above CSS members were acting in an unbecoming manner. Rather, Border Control power was removed “to ensure regional security during this transition.” (“This transition” referring to the illegal forum move.)

It should be noted that members of the CSS who are also members of the Cabinet did not have their Border Control power removed. (For the record, that would be Imkihca and Sam111, in addition to Hileville as Delegate Observer.) So, Hileville and the Cabinet removed the only real means of responding to an illegal coup d'etat of the region from all CSS members who were not part of the Cabinet that decided to engage in the above illegal activities.

Question: Did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly violate the Regional Officers Act by removing Border Control powers from Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, Kringalia, and Farengeto, “to ensure regional security”?